The number of Hong Kong and Macau students studying in Taiwan has increased by 50 percent since the Taiwan-Hong Kong Services and Exchanges Office opened in July, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) said yesterday.
Chen was responding to questions about the office at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Internal Administration Committee.
The office, established to support Hong Kongers after Beijing in June imposed new national security legislation in the territory, provides consultations and assistance for Hong Kongers seeking to study, work, invest or live in Taiwan.
Chen said he was not at liberty to disclose the exact number of Hong Kongers the office has helped, when asked by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷).
As of the end of last month, the office had received more than 1,600 telephone calls and e-mails asking for assistance, Chen said.
The office is next year to receive an additional NT$30 million (US$1.04 million) to offer the services, Chen said.
A total of 4,920 Hong Kong and Macau students applied to Taiwanese universities this year, including 4,097 from Hong Kong and 823 from Macau, Entrance Committee for Overseas Chinese Students data showed.
The number of enrolled students from the regions totaled 4,169 this year, including 3,505 from Hong Kong and 644 from Macau, up 47.1 percent from last year, the data showed.
Meanwhile, addressing Kinmen residents’ calls to resume the “three small links,” Chen said the council would consider doing so after the COVID-19 pandemic has ended.
The three links, which have been suspended by the council since February due to the pandemic, refers to commercial, transportation and postal exchanges between Kinmen, Matsu and China’s coastal cities.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching